Narratives about disabled people have become more negative over the years, but few of us could have imagined disabled children would also be targets.

Yet much of the language used by the media in relation to the Government’s proposed educational reforms for children with different needs has portrayed young disabled people as an overly expensive burden.

The cost of Special Educational Needs (SEN) provision is, allegedly, ‘unsustainable’, ‘ballooning’ or ‘spiralling’ out of control and the system as a whole is in ‘crisis’, with councils teetering on the brink collapse – largely due to disabled kids, apparently.

Disabled adults, meanwhile, have also come under fire in the last year, with the Government seeking to slash Personal Independence Payments (PIP) and investigate why large numbers of young unemployed people are claiming to be ill or disabled.

In recent times we’ve also seen politicians call for cuts in welfare expenditure (including on disabled people) to free up the funds needed for other sectors such as defence.

Many of us will be familiar with this type of framing, known as ‘zero sum thinking’. It suggests there is only so much money in the system and that spending on one group causes other people or sectors to lose out.

And disabled people are too often singled out as the sector/group whose support costs ‘too much’.

But such framing is not inevitable nor is it a fact. It is a choice.

Politicians and journalists worried about money could equally well choose to focus on the £60 billion lost to the economy through unpaid taxes last year, which is five times more than the amount spent on educating disabled children.

Or on the long-term economic savings made by educating disabled children now, thereby making them more independent in the future.

Or they could turn their attention to the devastating impact of austerity on local authorities’ finances.

Take your pick.

But negative framings of disabled people are strong and can be mirrored in the stance of the parts of the population towards us, albeit with some important nuances.

The recently published British Attitudes Survey shows that while support for cutting benefits for disabled people who cannot work is, given the narratives above, surprisingly low (7%), support for increasing their benefits is at its lowest (49%) since the survey began in 1998.

Furthermore, support for more spending on education, health, benefits (in general) and, especially, welfare for poor people has plummeted since 1989.

This is despite the fact that the welfare bill overall has remained steady as proportion of GDP over the decades, even if the proportion of it made up by disability benefits spending has increased.

So attitudes are hardening, but disabled kids? Who’d ever have guessed it?

The Government’s response to the alleged costliness of educating disabled children is the Every Child Achieving and Thriving white paper, which it says is a push to achieve greater inclusion and better outcomes for children with different needs.

Critics of the plan say it will result in many parents/carers and disabled children losing vital legal safeguards as well as individually tailored education plans and the right to choose the most appropriate school.

The Government’s SEND proposals will make it more difficult for disabled children to get the support they require to meet their individual needs – Gillian Doherty

Much of the concern relates to the Government’s plan to drastically reduce the number of children receiving Education Health and Care Plans (EHCPs), which are backed by part 3 of the Children’s and Families Act 2014.

The significance of an EHCP is not merely that it records a child’s needs, but that it creates specific legal rights, including access to the SEND Tribunal and duty on the local authority to secure the provision detailed in the plan.

The white paper proposes that only children with the most complex needs will have EHCPs in future, with other disabled children instead being given school-level planning documents called Individual Support Plans (ISPs).

Some parents/carers and campaigners fear that there will be no statutory duty to deliver the provisions in ISPs and that the right of appeal at a SEND tribunal will be lost.

Other concerns raised about the proposals are:
• That children qualifying for EHCPs will be provided with pre-set support packages rather than individually tailored education programmes.
• That responsibility for delivering EHCPs (for those who still receive them) will be moved from councils to schools, meaning disputes will shift from ‘a failure to secure Section F provision’ to disagreements about the delivery of support.
• That parents/carers and disabled children will no longer be able to choose their favoured school, instead being directed to choose a placement from a list provided by the council.
• That tribunals will no longer be able to name school placements but only recommend that councils reconsider their choices.

Gillian Doherty, co-founder of SEND Action and now a director of Special Needs Jungle, told CDA: “The Government’s proposed SEND reforms will reduce disabled children’s legal rights. They will make it more difficult for disabled children to get the support they require to meet their individual needs.”

Responding to claims that the white paper proposals will improve inclusion, Gillian said: “The proposals risk forcing disabled children into “inclusion bases” (separate units) within mainstream schools without appropriate assessments and support to understand their needs or the provision required to meet them. This isn’t inclusion.”

Meanwhile, Bonnie, a participant in Inclusion Barnet’s Disability Justice programme, suggested inclusion can be more complicated than putting children with differences in mainstream classes without the right support or adaptations.

Bonnie told CDA: “My children have been out of education for three years. They were stressed out in big groups and being punished all the time for it. They struggled with attendance.”

Bonnie, whose two children are neurodivergent, added: “We should have education created in small environments instead of large corporate environments. Trauma-informed schools would be a good start across the board.”

For its part, the Government insists these concerns are unfounded, saying in its announcements and its emails with CDA that the changes are motivated by a wish to improve outcomes and inclusion (rather than to cut costs), that tribunals will continue to provide vital legal safeguards and that special schools will still have a place in the new system.

A Department for Education spokesperson told CDA:

“We inherited a SEND system under immense strain, with families waiting months for support, and poor outcomes for children. Our once-in-a-generation reforms will change that.”

They added: “Legal duties on schools to identify and support children’s needs are getting stronger, not weaker. And we will never leave parents without a route to challenge decisions about their child’s support.”

They further said: “We have consulted on our proposals to make sure we get these reforms right, and in the meantime we’re investing in schools to improve inclusion and build a system where every child gets the right support, in their local area, without a fight.”

The Government is being careful with its language on this but it seems to me that in this case, as with the PIP proposals and the Milburn review, disabled people and their families are being targeted because we are deemed to be costing the country too much.

Until or unless our culture shifts so that disabled people are equally valued, we may continue to be scapegoated in this way. It is the work of CDA, other DPOs and disability champions and campaigners to bring about this change and we must continue the fight to do so.